Before a single image appears onscreen, you hear a cough.

"Contagion," director Steven Soderbergh's movie about a viral pandemic that kills millions, definitely appeals to the hypochondriac in all of us. It's scary in that sense, because it stays anchored in what might really happen if a potent bug for which there is no cure suddenly spread rapidly.

But strangely, as we watch Oscar winners get really sick and die, we just don't feel much emotionally for these characters. Maybe it's because there are so many characters. Or maybe it's Soderbergh's almost documentary-like approach to the topic.

The movie's forte is in showing how death can be casually spread by a hand dipping into a bowl of peanuts at a bar, a dirty dish that somebody has to wash, the pole you grab onto in the subway, a casual touch between passing strangers.

The many ways in which humans behave badly when living in fear also feel credible: conspiracy theories, bad politics, withheld information, venal favoritism by those in the know. Then, when things turn bleak, you get panic, riots, thuggery, profiteering, health care workers striking, kidnappings as leverage to get the vaccine. It's all too plausible.

But rather clinical.

Soderbergh might have gained a more invested audience if he had focused a little less on health experts valiantly struggling to get ahead of the virus (often at great personal risk) or had given a couple of characters — and his audience — time to grieve.

In particular I'm thinking of Matt Damon as a Minneapolis husband whose wife (Gwyneth Paltrow) starts feeling under the weather in a Macao casino, then has an extended layover with her old flame in Chicago on the way home. Damon is left to shield his surviving teen daughter as the world goes crazy.

Paltrow is the first to die (the ad campaign gives that one away) but gets more screen time in flashbacks as the experts track the origin of the epidemic. But if you're waiting for Damon to shed a tear, you'll wait a long time.

Perhaps strangely enough, it's Jennifer Ehle ("Pride & Prejudice") as a virologist trying to develop a vaccine who brings the biggest dose of humanity to the story.

Lots of big-name actors turn in perfectly credible, if not deeply moving, performances. Laurence Fishburne and Kate Winslet become the faces of the Centers for Disease Control. Marion Cotillard ("La Vie en Rose") traces the outbreak's beginnings for the World Health Organization. Less face time goes to Bryan Cranston as a Homeland Security obstructionist and Elliott Gould as an epidemiologist who breaks the rules to get to a breakthrough.

Perhaps most intriguing is Jude Law as a self-righteous blogger who spreads misinformation and a homeopathic cure, becoming a media star in the process. He's the closest this script comes to providing a villain (does he really need that crooked front tooth?), though he's never completely discredited.

"Contagion" is an OK movie that stops short of greatness because it pulls emotional punches. Still, you could do worse than a topical, fictional movie that stays real and feels like an episode of "Frontline." What we feel, watching "Contagion," is for ourselves.

Contact the writer:

402-444-1269, bob.fischbach@owh.com